a Christian heresy that taught that Jesus was inferior to God. Though condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325, Arianism was adopted by many of the Germanic peoples who entered the Roman Empire over the next centuries.

caliph

temporal leader of the Islamic community.

celibacy

a key value in the monastic movement; emphasized abstinence from sexual relations and placed a strong emphasis on virginity.

curiales

city councilors; traditionally played an important administrative role in the empire, but governing problems of the third century caused many to flee their cities.

diocese

the area under the jurisdiction of a Christian bishop; based originally on Roman administrative districts.

federates

allies; Germanic tribes allied with Rome

heresy

the holding of religious doctrines different from the official teachings of the church.

iconoclasm

an eighth-century Byzantine movement against the use of icons (pictures of sacred figures), which was condemned as idolatry.

iconoclasts

opponents of icons.

jihad

“striving in the way of the Lord.” In Islam, the practice of conducting raids against neighboring peoples, which was an expansion of the Arab tradition of tribal raids against their persecutors.

major domus

mayor of the palace and chief officer of the king’s household; they expanded their power at the expense of the Frankish kings in the seventh and eighth centuries.

monasticism

Christian monasticism originated as a solitary ascetic attempt at a mystical experience with God; through the influence of Benedict of Nursia, it evolved into a communal venture that stressed moderation and a disciplined existence based on the ideal of poverty, chastity and obedience.

monk

“someone who lives alone.”

nun

a woman who belongs to a religious order

Petrine supremacy

the doctrine that the bishop of Rome—the pope—as the successor of Saint Peter (traditionally considered the first bishop of Rome) should hold a preeminent position in the church.

tetrarchy

“rule by four.” New administrative system favored by Diocletian; it relied on the authority of four tetrarchs, each in a different capital.

theme

an administrative unit in the Byzantine empire that combined civil and military responsibilities.

wergild

“money for a man.” In early Germanic law, a person’s value in monetary terms, which was paid by a wrongdoer to the family of the person who had been injured or killed.

aristocracy

a class of hereditary nobility in medieval Europe; a warrior class who shared a distinctive lifestyle based on the institution of knighthood, although there were social divisions within the group based on extremes of wealth.

demesne

the part of a manor retained under the direct control of the lord and worked by the serfs as part of their labor services.

fief

a landed estate granted to a vassal in exchange for military services.

manor

an agricultural estate operated by a lord and worked by peasants who performed labor services and paid various rents and fees to the lord in exchange for protection and sustenance.

missi dominici

“messengers of the lord king;” used by Charlemagne to ensure counts were complying with his wishes.

monogamy

marriage to one person; promoted by the church in the Early Middle Ages.

primogeniture

an inheritance practice in which the eldest son receives all or the largest share of the parents’ estate.

scriptoria

writing rooms where monks copied the works of early Christianity and Latin classical authors.

serfs

agricultural laborers bound to the land during the Middle Ages; required to provide labor, to pay rents, and submit to their lord’s jurisdiction.

subinfeudation

the practice in which a lord’s greatest vassals subdivided their fiefs and had vassals of their own, and those vassals, in turn, subdivided their fiefs and so on down to simple knights whose fiefs were too small to subdivide.

tithe

a tenth; serfs were required to pay a tenth of their produce to the village church.

vassal

a person granted a fief, or landed estate, in exchange for providing military services to the lord and fulfilling certain other obligations such as appearing at the lord’s court when summoned and making a payment on the knighting of the lord’s eldest son.

aristocracy

a class of hereditary nobility in medieval Europe; a warrior class who shared a distinctive lifestyle based on the institution of knighthood, although there were social divisions within the group based on extremes of wealth.

bourgeoisie

burghers; merchants and artisans who resided in the walled cities of the High Middle Ages.

carruca

a heavy, wheeled plow with an iron plowshare; widespread use in the High Middle Ages contributed to increased agricultural production.

chansons de geste

a form of vernacular literature in the High Middle Ages that consisted of heroic epics focusing on the deeds of warriors.

chivalry

the ideal of civilized behavior that emerged among the nobility in the eleventh and twelfth centuries under the influence of the church; a code of ethics knights were expected to uphold.

commercial capitalism

an economic system in which people invested in trade and goods in order to make a profit.

commune

in medieval Europe, an association of townspeople bound together by a sworn oath for the purpose of obtaining basic liberties from the lord of the territory in which the town was located; also, the self-governing town after receiving its liberties.

demesne

lands of an estate; lords allowed peasants to farm their demesne in exchange for money payments.

guild

an association of people with common interests and concerns, especially people working in the same craft. In medieval Europe, guilds came to control much of the production process and to restrict entry into various trades.

nominalism

a school of thought in medieval Europe that, following Aristotle, held that only individual objects are real and that universals are only names created by humans.

realism

a school of thought in medieval Europe that, following Plato, held that individual objects are merely manifestations of universal ideas.

scholasticism

the philosophical and theological system of the medieval schools, which emphasized rigorous analysis of contradictory authorities; often used to try to reconcile faith and reason.

three-field system

in medieval agriculture, the practice of dividing the arable land into three fields so that one could lie fallow while the others were planted in winter grains and spring crops.

trivium and quadrivium

together formed the seven liberal arts that were the basis of medieval and early modern education. Grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic or logic made up the trivium; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music made up the quadrivium.

vernacular

local languages, Spanish, French, English, German; used increasingly in creative literature during the High Middle Ages.

common law

law common to the entire kingdom of En­gland; imposed by the king’s courts beginning in the twelfth century to replace the customary law used in county and feudal courts that varied from place to place.

exchequer

permanent royal treasury; one of a number of institutions that strengthened the monarchy in England.

excommunication

a form of censure denying a person the sacraments of the church.

indulgence

a remission of temporal punishment or time spent in purgatory; granted by the church for charitable contributions or good works.

interdict

papal ruling that forbade priests to dispense the sacraments of the church in a region or a country.

lay investiture

the practice in which a layperson chose a bishop and invested him with the symbols of both his temporal office and his spiritual office; led to the Investiture Controversy, which was ended by compromise in the Concordat of Worms in 1122.

mudéjares

Muslims not expelled or killed during the reconquista who chose to stay under Christian rule, many working as farmers or in small industrial enterprises.

papal curia

council of high church officials responsible for administrative oversight of the Roman Catholic Church.

reconquista

the Christian reconquest of Spain; thought to be a sacred mission for many inhabitants of the Christian inhabitants and rulers of the Iberian peninsula.

relics

the bones of Christian saints or objects intimately associated with saints that were considered worthy of veneration.

repartimiento

redistribution of land, houses and property to Christian warriors and colonists during the reconquista.

sacraments

rites of the Catholic Church thought to have been initiated by Christ and essential for salvation.

sultan

ruler or holder of power, especially in an Islamic state.

Black Death

the outbreak of plague (mostly bubonic) in the mid-fourteenth century that killed from 25 to 50 percent of Europe’s population.

conciliarism

a movement in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe that held that final authority in spiritual matters resided with a general church council, not the pope; emerged in response to the Avignon papacy and the Great Schism and used to justify the summoning of the Council of Constance (1414–1418).

condottieri

leaders of mercenary soldiers who sold the services of their troops to the highest bidder

grandi

patrician class of nobles that dominated Italian cities and towns.

Great Schism

the crisis in the late medieval church when there were first two and then three popes; ended by the Council of Constance (1414–1418).

Jacquerie

mid-fourteenth century peasant revolt in northern France caused by economic and social disorder as a result of the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War.

mysticism

the immediate experience of oneness with God.

pogroms

organized massacres of Jews.

popolo grasso

literally the “fat people”; the wealthy merchant-industrialist class of Florence who expanded their political influence during the fourteenth century.

popolo minuto

the small shopkeepers and artisans of the Italian city-states.

purgatory

according to the church, the place where souls went after death to be purged of punishment for sins committed in life.

scutage

monetary payments in lieu of military service; increasingly popular among monarchs during the fourteenth century.